• Goodeye8@piefed.social
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    3 days ago

    The practical examples of cooperatives (which tend to follow the principle of worker owned businesses) don’t use stocks as some kind of speculative tools. Stocks serve primarily two purpose. First is to act a voting slip where any amount of stocks you own gives you equal voting rights with other stock holders. And the second is dividend payout which usually is proportional to the amount of stocks you hold.

    I’d rather earn 50k a year than 40k and get a 15k worth of ownership in my company. The problem with workers being forced to invest in their workplace is that not all workplaces are a good investment. Its not fair to have blockbuster employees lose a significant portion of their wealth solely because they got a job there instead of pizzahut.

    Fair enough, but that has nothing to do with democratization of the workplace. If you don’t want to invest you don’t get a voting right and you don’t get dividends, you just get paid for the labor you do.

    It creates a massive wealth gap and it becomes harder for new business to get off the ground because anyone who would work for them is being forced to take on significant risk.

    If by massive wealth gaps you mean successful companies get to pay their workers more than not successful companies then that’s almost how capitalism works, except workers don’t get paid more, only the stock holders get paid more. So really capitalism is doing far worse in creating massive wealth gaps.

    The better version allows employees to invest in any array of companies to better protect their individual wealth against market fluctuations and have it grow proportional to the economy. When every citizen holds their wealth in the snp500 they all get richer when the economy grows. Its why we see a lot of government programs doing whatever they can to get people to invest. But still people choose not to.

    The better version is where the stock market doesn’t exist in the first place because to participate in the stock market you have to have extra money you can spend on stocks and most people do not have that kind of money.

    As for exploitation people have very different definitions so its best left to government policy not the economic systems. If you dont want 12hr shifts in the mines the government should step in and legislate.

    So where exactly is that legislation? Because almost 200 years ago economists imagined the increased productivity from technological advances would have us working 24 hours a week? Instead we’re working 40 hours a week which most of the western world has been stuck at for over a century.

    Theoretically capitalism could solve this if consumers were less apathetic and engaged with the companies business practices more but they aren’t and thats probably a huge waste of peoples time so we differ the responsibility to government.

    This is so detached from reality I can’t even be bothered to fully explain how this thinking is completely wrong. Do you have the money to buy a car that doesn’t use gas? and then clothes that are not made by children? and then electronics that don’t depend on exploiting the third world for cheap raw materials? And then all the food stuff that is made by companies who don’t use plastic wrapping? Or produce that doesn’t come from exploited animals? Or crops that aren’t showered with pesticides? Or fish that’s not caught by overfishing? If you’re a laborer you most likely can’t afford all of those things because you too are being exploited and you have to buy what you can afford and not what would be conscious consumer choice. And that’s assuming that you’re even aware the shitty things companies are doing so you could be a conscious consumer.